What You Can Feel You Can Heal
Awareness of what we feel is the first step to change. What you can feel, you can heal (Gray, 1984).
Can you pay attention to your feelings? Feelings seem to be the first responder to incidents in your life.
Awareness around The Anger, The Disappointment, The Sadness, The Disrespect, in fact any real feeling, is the first step to healing and change.
Jenny Ensing, pictured above, is my wife and the love of my life. Jenny is a Relationships Counsellor here in Hamilton, New Zealand. Jenny coined this most helpful and simple tool to bring individuals from the place of ”awareness” across a bridge to ”their relationship tools”.
She created an acronym for this process .. ABC, where A, B, C stands for Awareness, Breathe, Choose.
Awareness: Intentionally take notice or gain awareness of the feeling.
Breathe: Draw in a long deep breath (to give you 1 second to think differently)
Choose: Choose from the relationship tools that you have learned so far.
As you and your partner learn more tools in each relationship session, you’ll both have more from which to choose.
Thanks Jenny for that A-B-C tool. It’s most helpful!
Jenny’s A-B-C tool is simple to remember, especially at times when we are triggered by feelings and need it most.
Citations:
Ensing, Jenny, A-B-C Awareness, Breathe, Choose, Courage Counselling, 2015.
Gray, John, Ph.D. What You Can feel You Can Heal, 1984.